Till human voices wake us, and we drown
by Bathorybabe
Summary: She hears the drums, insistent and desperate. She is hunted by something both forgotten and familiar, and the word 'oath' rings in her ears. A tale of the calling and just how far one elf will go to keep his word. One shot.


**A/N: Just a note to say the change in tense is intentional. Also the title is take from the absolutely amazing poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot…I thought it was fitting.**

She could hear the drums…they pulsed in her blood like a second heartbeat urging her farther into madness and desperation. Each moment the strange and seductive tempo crawled its way deeper inside and she lost one more shard of herself to haunting melody.

Loss of time had been the first casualty…without the sun to mark the days her existence melted into an ever present night where sleep was hard in coming and her nightmares lurked on the edges of shadows that pressed against her eyes. How long had it been since she had crawled her way through dusty stone paths to carve her way through creatures that with every passing moment began to resemble her own weary flesh? And how many of those cut down had once been like her, healthy and whole, marching to their death with a song carving out their insides, emptying them of everything they had once fought for?

And still they came, seeking her out as much as she sought them, pulled to one another by a twisted thread, taut and ever strengthening. There was no rest in her blood, her bones snapping against such a thing as they urged her forward with jerky, shambling steps. Distantly she remembered a time when she moved with a fluid grace, like water singing over stone, every gesture a study in control and elegance. Such an effortless style had decayed into a savagery that suffused her limbs, revealing with every thrust the darkness that spread beneath her skin.

Skin. Flesh. Words that rang foreign and strange in her ears. This tissue that cracked and peeled, revealing snaking tendrils of ebony sickness; it no longer felt connected to her. It was other. A living memento mori of days spent in sun and sky and Maker help her is she actually thinking these depraved thoughts? To view her flesh, once ivory and soft as no longer hers to claim? Gasping raw and painful breaths she pulls at her arms, fingers tracing scars that paint a story across her skin, and she holds each telling of it close, mapping the lines like a palmist.

It is not enough. This void pulls at her and she is falling, drowning in the drums and she tries to draw breath from the very place that she knows is _her_. It is an island that gets smaller with every second, the waves of a bargain made long ago lapping away at the shore, and she scrambles to find a foothold. But the music sings, and she sways against rhythm, feet carrying her ever forward into the dance that holds its claim on her.

Two more have come from her, tearing at her armor to reveal the sickness that lies beneath. She fights, because part of her reminds her that it is needed, but she can't remember why. Blade meets blood, bone shatters into signposts pointing her way to the next encounter. There is always a next; she remembers this much. Never ending, never allowed to leave. You are with them until you die…here in the stone, an all encompassing grave marker that reminds you of your oath.

Oath…the word stirs something inside her. She held such a thing once, not from her lips, but from another's. A flash of scrolling black upon flesh, hair the color of wheat against honey skin. She tries to remember but there is only the memory of a promise too far gone to catch. The word slips from her fingers and she ventures farther. A year or more between the first step and the next, she hears the sigh of leather against stone and she stops. It is more and less than those that scrape at her, pulling at her soul to merge and meld into a single mind. This sound is apart from the eternity that chokes at her, it does not belong. She knows then that she is being hunted, but not by those who seek to hear the constant and creeping siren song; this predator is other, not of the collective that calls these caverns home. The knowledge is sharp and she scrambles away, seeking distance between herself and this visitor who has no business intruding on her descent into death.

And so she continues, losing more of _her_ and gaining more of _them_, until it is difficult to tell which lurks beneath her skin. She can feel them move, scuttling along stone, words unspoken but heard all the same. It is deafening in her skull, and she screams along with the song, voice gone feral with the unleashed desire to join, to understand, to _serve_.

It is then that they stop seeing her and instead look through the ghost of who she was. She is them, she is not a threat, she hears the sweet music that pulls at them, and she will be useful. Inside her a fluttering rages and rips, pleading the word "no" over and over, a litany to remember…but there is nothing to recall and she is so very tired of thinking upon this weakness called humanity that held her prisoner for so long.

She is walking and she feels a pain, scorching and sharp. It registers dully and she stops, eyes rolling as they seek out this new sensation. An arrow, she thinks that is the word, quivers in her arm, twitching in time to the sluggish thrum of her heart. The others don't notice, they are insistent in their journey and they leave her to bat and pull the invasion from herself, fascinated at the pull and tug as it brakes free.

Turning slowly she sees the other, the hunter that stalks her and should not be. It is male, that much she remembers, and something tells her this makes him less, he has no purpose beyond the spread. Were he female he would be kept, but he is not and is nothing but meat for the beast, and she feels this in her bones. And so she decides and hisses at him, a macabre sound that fills her with pin pricks of pleasure.

The hunter does not flee, does not hide from her and her poison. He seeks her out, coming ever closer and something shifts within her, teasing her with a word she had only just remembered. As she snarls, hands gripping her own battered weapon tight she sees him clearly. There is wheat. There is honey. And there is a mark, familiar and piece of her forgotten; black and trailing like her skin but placed there purposefully and not by slow degrees of death. She does not hesitate, the hunter seeks to rip her from the drums and it is why she came, why she fights, why she breathes. He will not take it from her.

The hunter is fast, strong, and something is routine that pulls at her about him. She has fought this man before, but there was no before, only the now…has she been fighting him forever? Swing, thrust, hack; these are things she knows and she carries them out. The hunter says nothing but cuts at her, causing her blood to run black and caustic in a river.

She does not succeed, she fails in her purpose. His blade finds a home in her flesh, splitting ribs and organs with a deafening sound and she falls. The hunter catches her, and he is gentle, tender and she is outraged at such a display. Then all at once the song is silenced and she gasps in loss, mind suddenly free of the driving need that haunted her for so long. Her eyes search for his and she slowly comes back to herself.

"_Mi cara_," he whispers softly, hand chasing the tendrils of matted hair across her face.

"Why?" she breathes, the word a fight in of itself to break free from her throat.

"I do not hold lightly to an oath, my dear friend. You had a need, and I am here. I am sorry I could not come sooner."

"Didn't…ask that…of you," she croaks, the idea of speech still strange on her tongue.

"Ah, _mi bella_, you speak as if you had a choice. I swore myself to you long ago. You spared my sorry hide in another life, and that is a debt I have been repaying ever since. This is the final payment, I think. I will keep you from the darkness and my oath shall be fulfilled."

She feels the pull of her death and she clings to his words. He holds her hand as her body shakes and a froth of black leaks from between her lips. There is sorrow in his gaze and relief in hers, and as her eyes flutter close she remembers. The faces of her friends, the deeds that bear her name, the family she loved and lost, it is all there, and as she finally lets go of this world, a smile chases her lips and her name rings loudly in her head; Elissa. She is herself once more and it is enough.

He holds her body long after it has gone slack, unwilling to remove flesh from flesh, knowing that the moment he does she is truly gone. How long he kneels there is unknown, but it is still and silent and he savors the last moments in the company of the most extraordinary woman he had ever known. The presence of darkspawn lurking the in shadows is what draws him from her, and he tenderly folds her hands against her chest, trying to offer what little dignity is available in this cursed place. He takes his leave as silently as he came, and is no more than a whisper to the creatures that call this madness home.

Others will come, the call of the drums a beacon calling them home. They will stumble over the bodies of those who came before, and not pause to think on who they were. But she is down there, and she was remembered, and for those that share her burden, it is something that is valued beyond price.


End file.
